Looks like we may never get the proof that the Arizona Corporation Commission has been bought and paid for by a certain electric company.

If you’re a ratepayer, you should be afraid. Be very afraid.

A judge has ruled that Commissioner Bob Burns has the legal right to investigate whether Arizona Public Service – and its parent company, Pinnacle West Capital Corp. – secretly waged a multi-million campaign to get its favored candidates elected to the panel that regulates utilities.

“Authority to determine whether to enforce a subpoena issued by an individual Commission member, or whether to sustain an objection to such a subpoena, rests with the Commission, and not with a court,” Kiley wrote in his 14-page ruling issued Thursday.

Regulators back APS all the way

Translation: one regulator has the right to order APS's to open its books if he suspects his fellow regulators owe their seats to state’s largest utility. But if those fellow regulators – the ones suspected of owing their allegiance to APS – want to block his investigation, they can.

Burns hasn’t yet decided whether to appeal. For the good of the state – or at least the state’s ratepayers (read: all of us) – he certainly should.

“If it stands, it means APS controls the commission from here on out, I would guess,” Burns told me. “It’s weird because he (Judge Kiley) says that I have the constitutional authority to issue the subpoenas but then the commission has the authority by statute and rules to block them.”

Kiley's ruling, if it stands, would ensure that no regulator would have a check over a corrupt Corporation Commission because the commission could simply block an investigation any time one of its members sets out to prove that his colleagues are in a utility's pocket.

Wonder why your APS bill has gone up?

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There are three big reasons why Arizona's largest utility is so involved in politics.
Wochit